Saturday 15 July 2006 18.55 EDT
First published on Saturday 15 July 2006 18.55 EDT

As a child breakdancing on Havana's run-down streets in the 1980s, "Thriller" blasting from a boom box, Carlos Acosta was set on being "the next Michael Jackson". But as hip-hop trophies gave way to ballet laurels across Europe, his life took an irrevocable turn. As a principal guest artist of the Royal Ballet in London, his Romeo was a highlight of its 75th anniversary celebrations last month, when he also danced Le Corsaire with Darcey Bussell for the Queen's 80th birthday.

Acosta's leap from Cuban street corners to Covent Garden was reflected in the semi-autobiographical Tocororo: A Cuban Tale, his first choreographed show, which he devised and directed. Its 2003 premiere at Havana's Gran Teatro was attended by Fidel Castro, and it was a hit at London's Sadler's Wells for two summers running. Set amid Havana's peeling grandeur, it was inspired by the sometimes colliding influences of Acosta's upbringing, from salsa and Afro-Cuban culture to the first ballet he was dragged to at the age of 13. Acosta danced the lead role, and his nephew Yonah his younger self, in the fable about a country boy ridiculed by his city peers for his balletic prowess, who is spurred to reconnect with his Cuban roots.

Tocororo returns to the London Coliseum on August 2-5. Acosta will also appear at Sadler's Wells this week, with guest artists from the Royal Ballet, presenting favourite scenes from George Balanchine and Kenneth MacMillan to tango.

Aged 32, and at the top of his profession, Acosta is feted for his dazzling leaps and artistry, and has drawn comparisons with Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. He also dances regularly with the Paris Opéra and the American Ballet Theatre in New York. His roles have included Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake, Albrecht in Giselle, Crown Prince Rudolf in Mayerling, and Colas in Frederick Ashton's comic La Fille mal gardée. This spring he added MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet, partnering Spanish-born Tamara Rojo. Allen Robertson, co-editor of Dance Now magazine, describes him as a "force of nature", whose athleticism and physique reflect his Cuban training, but also says he is "one of today's most polished and princely dancers".

Yet the day after a show, Acosta is exhausted. Yawning frequently, though apologetically ("I have jetlag half my life"), he walks stiffly and winces as he takes the stairs. Sipping coffee in a sun-filled atrium at the Coliseum ("Too hot?" he scoffs, "I'm from Cuba"), he is brooding about his performance, which was hard on the heels of a flight from Texas. "We're perfectionists. If we don't get it 100 per cent right ..." he trails off. He shares his flat in Islington, north London, with his girlfriend, a former nanny. But his schedule of 65-70 performances a year entails constant travel. This summer he takes Tocororo to Turkey and Lebanon, but will spend a welcome break in late August in Cuba. "I need at least five weeks before I start the next season," he says. "I do nothing - go to the beach, spend quality time with my family, see my nephews grow and take my mother out. A life without exercise or pain: eat whatever you want, drink - do what normal people do." While he will jog and visit the gym, ballet is out. "The body needs time to heal. Classical ballet is anti-anatomical, anti-human; the body's not made for it - there's always pain and trauma." A painful big toe joint this season, he says, has been "very hard to dance on - especially the spins. I had to have a cortisone shot so I could carry on. It took away the swelling - but now it's back."

Such rigours make classical ballet sound almost like a gladiatorial spectacle. As Acosta said on a BBC1 documentary, The Reluctant Ballet Dancer, in 2003: "You're only as good as your last show. They pay to see you at your best; they don't care if you're in pain." He grapples, too, with homesickness, separated from Cuba, his mother tongue and the people he grew up with. "The conflicts are there," he admits. "I didn't choose my career, so the freedom was taken away in deciding what I wanted to do with my life. My father pushed me into this without my consent. But now I'm grateful ... I'm really lucky, I can't forget that."

He was born in Havana in 1973, the youngest of 11 children, and grew up in the barrio of Los Pinos. His family name belonged to the owner of the plantation where his paternal ancestors were slaves, and the Afro-Cuban Santería religion, to which his father was devoted, is key to Tocororo. Aged nine, Acosta was part of a breakdancing gang, but his father practised tough love. Steering him away from petty crime, he enrolled him in Cuba's National Ballet School. Given the place of the arts in the Cuban revolution ("a revolution for the poor"), says Acosta, "money was never an issue".

While there was salsa on every street corner, he recalls the singer Beny Moré and the big-band jazz of the Buena Vista Social Club. He also praises as "pure poetry" the "very pure Cuban country singer" Polo Montañez, who died in 2002. Yet the influence of Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder was pervasive. "When you're young you rebel. If you tell a youngster that America is the enemy, it's more a reason to admire it."

When his mother had surgery for a brain tumour and his father was jailed for involvement in a serious traffic accident, Acosta played truant and was twice expelled. He knuckled down only when his father was released and transferred him to a boarding school for performing arts. At 16 he studied in Italy, scooped gold in the Prix de Lausanne and became a principal at the English National Ballet aged 18. But a bone spur in his ankle sent him back to Cuba for surgery and to the Cuban National Ballet. He joined Houston Ballet as a principal in 1993. But at the Royal Ballet five years later, he struggled for serious roles, switching from being a permanent member to a guest principal. "I expected too much maybe. I had a name already, but I had to wait in the queue. From dancing every day in Houston, and opening nights, I went to one show in a month if I was lucky." In London, "I didn't know anyone. The city was harsh, dark, cold, rainy. It was really frustrating. Later, everything came together."

The first black principal of the Royal Ballet, Acosta was adamant about not being typecast. He has been a pioneer in the extension of colour-blind casting from opera to classical ballet. "The fact that I'm the first black Romeo - and I make people forget it - is a big achievement," he says. "If they'd judged me for my looks, and put me in a box, the world would never have seen the Romeo that lies beneath me ... In New York there are black dancers and their aspirations are constantly killed." Yet in his view, recruitment of black people into classical ballet, as opposed to contemporary dance, remains a problem. "Ballet hasn't captured people's imagination, or got away from sexual prejudices. Parents want their sons to be footballers not ballet dancers - it's not cool. With minorities, it's even worse. The Royal Ballet is trying, but needs to work harder."

Preparing for a new role, he studies videos of past performances, "then you try to come up with your own interpretation. That's why classical ballets never die - you manage to find a different way to express love or make people laugh." With Romeo, "I tried to feel what it felt like the first time I kissed a girl. He grows after marriage, from being a kid into a sense of responsibility." Yet Acosta, who now has few classical roles left to attempt, fears a dearth of challenges. "I feel I was too successful too fast. How many Swan Lakes can you stand? I try to do new things, but it's hard to look forward to something when you know exactly what you'll get."

He most admires artists who "try to push the limits and boundaries; those geniuses in the '50s and '60s - Ashton, MacMillan, Balanchine, Rudolf Nureyev, Margot Fonteyn". Where, he says, are the "MacMillans and Balanchines of our time? There are stories to tell. We need to try for more risk, to find a language that reflects today. The young generation is looking for us to create something unique, and I don't think we're doing it right. We're in crisis - we're stuck. Why a new Cinderella? Why not [Khaled Hosseini's novel] The Kite Runner?"

Aware that his years at the top are dwindling ("you grow but eventually you'll decline"), Acosta says he has many ideas for his own choreography, though as yet little time. Nine years ago he began a fictionalised autobiography in Spanish which is nearing completion, and is translating it himself.

Since his work abroad was sanctioned by the Cuban authorities, he is able to return freely. "I was lucky," he says. "I asked permission to go; I didn't defect." Not all Cuban performers are as fortunate. Some say they have been threatened with jail or bans after taking up US visas. "I try not to interfere in politics," Acosta says. "I do have political views, but they're irrelevant. I'm an artist." He looks forward to returning to Cuba to work and have a family. "I'll probably have a dance group but not direct a company. I want time to play baseball with my kids."

On his lingering sense of displacement, he says, "deep inside, I always questioned my life, from being removed, not doing what I wanted to do. Whenever I go back to Cuba I'm a foreigner and treated differently - it's hard." He feels changed, though, from a "time when I felt I was a dancing machine, that I didn't have any rest. I learned to accept my life more. It's to do with growing up. I do have regrets. But I don't want to be ungrateful. I have to carry on and deal with my ghosts."

Ultimately, he dwells on the rewards. "The truth is, I love to perform. The contact I establish with people when I'm on stage - there's nothing else in the world like that. You make them forget what's troubling them. You grow through your art, through pain, by giving people pleasure. That's a true religion."

Inspirations

David by Michelangelo La Pedrera by Antoni Gaudí Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse Un Montón de Estrellas by Polo Montañez